What happens when a black hole and a star meet in the middle of nowhere in a galaxy? But when they do occur, the immense gravity of the supermassive black hole tears the star apart. That rips out a stream of gas from the star, which eventually loops around in a disk around the black hole as the star's orbit spirals into the black hole. A computer graphics simulation of a star being disrupted by the gravitational pull of a nearby supermassive black hole. Courtesy NASA/ESA/STScILearning About the Black HoleFor a black hole to disrupt a star like this, it has to be quite massive.